‘Wonderfully weird story’ wins new children’s fiction competition

North Wales based writer Chloë Heuch is the overall winner of Firefly Press’s New Children’s Fiction from Wales competition.

Her middle grade novel A History of My Weird, tells the story of Mo, who has been diagnosed autistic, and the challenges she faces in and out of school.

Wales based children’s publisher Firefly Press announced the shortlist and winners of the competition today (11 October) which aims to discover the best new writing for children coming from Welsh authors currently without publishing deals.

Launched on St David’s Day, the writing competition is open to writers either based in Wales or who have grown up in the country.

The winning works were selected from three separate age groups to write for ( 7-9, 9-12 and 12-18), and the three winners and the top story were selected by top children’s authors Catherine Fisher, Catherine Johnson and Malachy Doyle and Firefly Publisher Penny Thomas.

‘Genuinely funny’

Heuch’s A History of My Weird won the 9-12 age category of the competition described as “a genuinely funny, character-led novel with a fresh voice, one that deserves to find readers,” by judge Catherine Johnson.

The other category winners were Victoria Pici for her story The Map of Rhos for age 7-9s, “a delightfully written, captivating story of fairies battling to regain their rightful homes, which have been stolen by invading elves,” said judge Malachy Doyle. And Lucy Mohan won the 12+ category for Wick Wood, ‘a thrilling, twisty, whodunnit with a genuinely creepy setting, I loved it!’ said judge and Firefly Publisher Penny Thomas.

‘We wanted to run a competition to find great new children’s fiction and authors writing from Wales and give everyone a chance to submit to us, and we have certainly done that, with some awesome results,’ said Thomas.

‘All entries to the competition were judged anonymously and I’d like to thank the judges for their hard work. We are delighted with the results and may look to make this competition a regular event.’

The winner of each category wins a one-to-one editorial session with a Firefly editor and the overall winner wins a place on a Literature Wales’ Tŷ Newydd Writing Centre residential course in 2023.